Earth Notes

The best cider starts with heirloom varieties of apples. At least that’s what Kanin Routson prefers. Kanin, along with his wife Tierney, brother Cody and sister in law Claire, operate Stoic Cider on a farm near Prescott, Ariz.

In May 1902 a young man with a black beard and tousled hair stood beside the Muddy River in a place later submerged by the waters of Lake Mead. Leslie Goodding inspected an unusual willow tree there—shrubby with long, slender branches and festooned with dangling, pale-yellow catkins. He cut a few sprigs from the tree and clamped them into his wooden plant press.  

Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe. But here on Earth it’s in much shorter supply. As demand has increased, companies have aggressively ramped up helium exploration in the U.S.—including northern Arizona.

In recent decades northern leopard frogs have become refugees in their own land.

The Triassic period was a time of giants on Earth: lumbering reptiles with armored plates, and fifteen-foot-long crocodiles. The fossils of these extinct beasts are preserved in the rainbow-colored rocks of the Petrified Forest National Park in northern Arizona. But the same rocks hold the secrets of tiny creatures too.